Gender quotas have no place in science funding

The taxpayer-funded National Health and Medical Research Council - under CEO Anne Kelso - plans to award grants equally to male and female researchers, even if applications are not evenly split.

To fund their medical research in Australia, male scientists may have to start identifying as trans or “non-binary” to get a fair shake.

This is because the nation’s largest body that administers medical research funding – the taxpayer-funded National Health and Medical Research Council – has decided to impose gender quotas on the awarding of funding for research, even though female researchers are already more likely to receive funding.

The NHMRC typically awards about $370m in investigator grants to medical researchers every year. Starting from next year, these grants must be awarded equally to male and female researchers, even if applications are not evenly split. The NHMRC also has announced: “For the first time, non-binary researchers will also be explicitly included in this and other measures to foster gender equity in NHMRC funding, recognising the systemic disadvantage that they experience.”

Of course, nobody wants women to miss out on fair opportunities for research funding. And if high-quality applications can be split perfectly down the middle to ensure a perfect 50-50 ratio between male and female researchers, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it. If 70 per cent of applications were from female scientists and only 40 per cent of the grants were awarded to them, I think all of us would understand the policy’s rationale.

But that is not the case. According to an editorial recently published in Nature, last year only 20 per cent of the applicants in the most established research group were women. How the NHMRC will achieve a 50 per cent gender ratio out of a 20 per cent female application rate at this level has not been made clear. (At least they’ve included the non-binary category for some wiggle room.)

What is clear is that when women apply for funding, they are just as likely as men to receive it. According to Nature: “From 2019 to 2021, more applications for investigator grants at the earliest career stage came from women – who were awarded 137 grants, compared to 123 for men.”

And according to table five of the NHMRC’s Investigator Grants 2022 Outcomes Fact Sheet, women are already more likely to be funded. This year, although the total number of female applicants was fewer at the top level, when they did apply 41.7 per cent of women won grant funding compared with 23 per cent of men. At the mid-career level, 26.6 per cent of women were successful in getting their research funded while 12.6 per cent of men were. And at the junior level, where more women apply for funding than men, 11.8 per cent of women were funded compared with 8.8 per cent of men. If women are already more likely to receive funding then the disadvantage that the quota is apparently correcting for is ambiguous.

The usual argument is that there are fewer women applying for grant numbers at the top level because they have faced disadvantage throughout their careers and so it is justifiable that some form of affirmative action is required to even the playing field.

As a working mother I am sympathetic to the argument that women face challenges that are unique to their sex. But while it is true that women once faced systemic barriers in the past it is not clear that these barriers still exist.

More women than men earn PhDs, including in science, technology, engineering and maths disciplines, and female doctoral graduates out-earn men. In the early stages of their careers more women than men apply for grants and receive them. The NHMRC’s data shows that last year 181 junior women applied for funding compared with 167 men. If more women earning PhDs, applying for grants and winning grants counts as structural disadvantage, then the patriarchy really does work in mysterious ways.

Two research scientists writing in Quillette, the online magazine of which I am editor, have argued the reason for the discrepancy at the top levels is simply an artefact of a generational shift.

Decades ago there were fewer women earning PhDs and undertaking science careers. This discrepancy shows up today when looking at senior levels of the profession. But this discrepancy is not necessarily evidence of unfair treatment. It could be, but to assert that it is without conducting the appropriate study is unscientific – not what we would expect from a leading scientific body.

Former NHMRC grant recipient and University of Melbourne emeritus professor Anthony Jorm writes in Quillette: “The new policy champ­ioned by the current CEO (Anne Kelso) means that gender equity will override quality. Any adjustment of grant outcomes by gender necessarily requires that some women with lower quality applications will be favoured over some men with higher ones.”

We already have dubious research being produced within scientific fields from “feminist glaciology” to “the Racialisation of Epistemology in Physics”. We hardly need incentives for more.

And it is likely the public would prefer that its money were spent on the highest quality medical research – regardless of the gender of the lead researcher. Funding for scientific research is a public good, not a mandate for preferencing one set of researchers over another. The prestige of science rests on its perceived impartiality and meritocracy. While bias can and does exist in any human endeavour, custodians of our institutions have a duty to reduce bias, not exaggerate it.

The high status afforded to science in our society exists because it is seen as being above politics. Enforcing quotas to satisfy political objectives such as gender equity erodes the perception that science is above politics and reduces its status. By awarding funding for any reason other than merit, Australia’s leading body of funding for medical research undermines the principles on which the scientific enterprise rests.